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Gabriel Arana

Gabriel Arana is a senior editor at The American Prospect. His articles on gay rights, immigration, and media have appeared in publications including The New Republic, The Nation, Salon, The Advocate, and The Daily Beast.

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Recent Articles

div#in-article-ad { display:none !important; } ol.conversation { margin-bottom:20px !important; } T he poster above may have some social conservatives in Texas clutching their pears, but it was feminists who were fighting over whether “A Is For”’s ad campaign was offensive last week. Shortly after the group kicked off its campaign to raise money for four Texas abortion funds, a debate erupted on Twitter accusing the organizers of a concert benefiting several Texas abortion funds for being cissexist and bioessentialist in their advertising campaign. For those who may not have been hip with the lingo, a cisgender person is someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. Here’s a sampling of the exchanges: Crucial cause, but can we not with the cissexism/bioessentialism, @AIsForOrg ? https://t.co/0B6rcihkjX — Jane Doe, MD (@DrJaneChi) January 19, 2014 @DrJaneChi Agreed. I love @AIsForOrg and that we're focused on solidarity,...

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2014. I t is easy to overstate the importance of the State of the Union address in defining Obama’s legacy —particularly in an election year, when presidential pressure can become a liability for those running in down-ticket races—but there are at least two areas where progressives say the president should have pushed harder last night: immigration and protections for gay, lesbian, and transgender people in the workplace. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would outlaw workplace discrimination against LGBT people, passed the Senate in November but has floundered in the House, where Speaker John Boehner, who has said publicly the legislation is unnecessary, said he will not bring it to a floor vote. Obama made no mention of ENDA last night, and has on a number of occasions downplayed the use of executive action to ensure rights for LGBT workers. The president did, however...

Photo courtesy of Jimmy LaSalvia J immy LaSalvia has spent part of his political life explaining himself to people like me: gay liberals who don't understand why he's a Republican. LaSalvia, who remembers putting up signs for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in junior high, left his native Kentucky in 2006 to join the staff of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay conservative group. Dismayed at what he saw as the Log Cabin's leftward drift—the group declined to endorse George W. Bush in 2004, and barely came out for John McCain—and its focus on social instead of economic issues, he co-founded GOProud in 2009. The organization, which co-sponsored the 2010 Conservative Political Action Convention before conference organizers decided to exclude the group in subsequent years, made headlines for outing Rick Perry pollster Tony Fabrizio after the campaign released a homophobic ad and hosting conservative firebrand Ann Coulter at its annual fundraiser. It has affiliates in several states and...

Flickr/MTSOfan I haven’t been home for Christmas in ten years. The excuse I always gave was that the holidays stress me out, which isn’t untrue. I can’t stand to watch once the local news station starts its seasonal coverage. You know the hard-hitting journalism I’m talking about: brave reporters staked out at Wal-Mart before it opens at 6 a.m. on Black Friday; with a frumpy Jane Doe browsing Amazon.com on Cyber Monday; and, around now, live on the scene at the airport giving updates about the bad weather, long lines, and flight delays. Just thinking about standing in a security line for two hours makes me want to punch Santa. There’s buying and wrapping gifts, writing and sending cards. If your family is anything like mine, Christmas is also when everyone comes together, gets drunk, and airs the grievances they’ve been holding onto all year. After that come the teary expressions of love and forgiveness. I’m one of five kids, my dad is one of eight, and my mom is one of four. All that...

The American Prospect/Gabriel Arana Tents set up by supporters of immigration reform on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. O n March 21 2012, José Gutiérrez—41-years-old and undocumented—was deported to Mexico. A successful film engineer in Los Angeles with two young children—a two-year-old son and a four-month-old daughter who was in the hospital at the time—Gutiérrez had lived in the United States since childhood. Nine days later, he risked crossing the border illegally at the San Luis Port of Entry in Arizona to reunite with his family. The next his wife Shena, a United States citizen, heard of him, he was in a coma. "He was beaten so badly his skull had to be removed in five parts," Shena told a group of about a dozen supporters of immigration reform on the National Mall earlier this week. "How do you explain to your children, 'This happened to your Dad because he's undocumented?'" Behind her, organizers from the Southern Border Communities Coalition, which sponsored the event...